Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Fascinating future timeline

The British Telecom’s futurology department has put out a timeline listing future events and when they will happen. Here's the top 10:

2006-2010: First artificial electronic life.

2006-2010: AI pop group gets top 10 hit

2008-2012: First divorce due to virtual affair with computer game character (see The Day You Discard Your Body for the eventual endpoint of this trend)

2008-2012: Addiction to online games a national problem

2011-2015: Highest earning celebrity is synthetic

2016-2020: Machine beats humans in knowledge

2020s: AI entity gets Nobel Prize

2020s: AI entities given vote

2030s: Robots superior to humans

2050s: Humanoid robots beat England football team.

This list has some problems. For example, if robots are superior to humans in 2030, then they will be beating humans at soccer in 2030 too. Once robots have the right to vote, humans become irrelevant (because the number of robots will quickly overwhelm the number of humans, and robots will likely vote for robot leaders), so it seems unlikely people will give robots voting rights any time soon. But it does make you think.